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Features Differences Between Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone

Microsoft Silverlight will reach end of support after October 2021. Learn more.

Silverlight for Windows Phone OS 7.1 is based on Silverlight 4. Many of the features in Silverlight are also in Silverlight for Windows Phone. However, some features are not supported or do not make sense in Windows Phone applications. This topic describes some of the features differences between Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone.

Supported Features

The following Silverlight 4 features are supported in Windows Phone OS 7.1. This is not a complete list. For more information about how to determine whether a type or member is supported in Windows Phone applications, see Class Library Support for Windows Phone.

  • Input

  • UI rendering

  • Media including WebCam support

  • Deep Zoom

  • Common language runtime (CLR)

  • Runtime controls

  • Layout

  • Data binding

  • Isolated storage

  • LINQ

  • Networking (HttpWebRequest, WebClient, Sockets)

  • Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

  • XAML

  • Implicit Styles

  • ICommand Support

  • XAP packaging

  • XML serialization

NoteNote:

Windows Phone application development in C# and Visual Basic is supported.

In some cases, supported features might include behavior differences from the corresponding feature on Windows. For feature implementation differences, see Implementation Differences Between Silverlight and Silverlight for Windows Phone.

The following additional features are supported in Silverlight for Windows Phone, but are not supported in Silverlight.

  • Gesture-aware controls

  • Manipulation events for touch input such as tap, double-tap and hold

  • Software input panel (SIP) support on the TextBox control

  • Silverlight extensions that support features specific to Windows Phone. For additional information, see the Class Library Reference for Windows Phone.

Unsupported Features

The following features are not supported in Silverlight for Windows Phone. This is not a complete list. For more information about how to determine whether a type or member is supported in Windows Phone applications, see Class Library Support for Windows Phone.

  • Applications hosted in the browser

  • Dynamic language runtime (DLR)

  • Expression trees

  • HTML DOM bridge

  • JavaScript programmability

  • Drag and Drop

  • Right click

  • Trusted applications

  • Printing

  • Silverlight plug-in object reference

  • Silverlight SDK features, including the following:

    • SDK controls

    • Duplex communication over HTTP

    • JSON serialization

      NoteNote:

      Partial support for JSON serialization is provided by the DataContractJsonSerializer class.

    • RSS and Atom feeds (syndication)

See Also

Other Resources

Silverlight for Windows Phone